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It’s that time of year. No, not the Christmas music I’m already hearing.

It’s time to prep for Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving is one of the holidays that made me start this blog so many years ago. It was the time of year in which I’d get email after email, phone call after phone call asking me “What wine should I serve for this special meal?”

But as a very proud American who is also an old-world wine lover and avowed Francophile, I feel very strongly that that this holiday should be celebrated with American wines. And my suggestions will continue to reflect that!

Something that hasn’t changed: with a) a large group of people and palates to please, and b) a series of dishes that vary wildly in flavor, texture, and temperature, I still like the idea of no less than four wines: a lighter white wine, a serious white, a delicate red, and a full-bodied red.

So here are my 2018 Thanksgiving Wines:

Viognier: In the past, I used Riesling as my go-to here. But Sue & Rodney Tipton at Acquiesce Winery make such a delightful Viognier- it’s a gently flavored white wine that will please any palate, and this is ideal for the non-drinker or the delicate flower in your group. For $26/bottle, I find this a massive bargain, and a great wine to start the meal with.

Chardonnay: I’ve narrowed it down to two possible bottles in my cellar: Harney Lane’s 2017 Chardonnay from Lodi, or DuMOL’s 2016 Russian River Valley. The Harney Lane is a beautiful expression of the grape and a wonderful California chardonnay with an ideal balance of oak- not too much, nor too little- making a creamy and flavorful balance, savory with perfect fruit and acidity, with a SRP of $28. And California’s DuMOL might tell your mouth you’re knocking back a very pricey white Burgundy! It’s soft, balanced, simply gorgeous– and a little on the high side (over $50/bottle). The downside is you have to join a waitlist to buy direct, but their wines are available at Wine.com, Wine Library.com, Sokolin.com, and many other online retailers that ship across the USA, and even some local high end retailers who carry the best of California wines. Totally worth the weight. And if we bounce through one of these bottles, I’ll open the other. No problem!

Rosé (ok, actually two of them on my lineup this year):
a) Still Rosé:Leah Jorgensen Rosé of Cabernet Franc. When I pour this $22 bottle, people lose themselves in ecstasy. I don’t know what she’s putting in the bottle beyond the grape juice, but the wine simply sings of pure fruit, delightful acidity, and beauty. Leah is a brilliant winemaker that you should be aware of, period!

b) Sparkling Rosé: The time I spent in Yakima recently certainly influenced this year’s Thanksgiving choices! I’ll be serving an $18 bottle of sparkling rosé from Treveri Cellars. The Treveri Sparkling rosé you can buy online is made of syrah and chardonnay and is a real crowd-pleaser, while my personal favorite is their tasting room rosé, which is only available in person at the tasting room. This is half pinot noir and half chardonnay and has an old-world charm that sings to me.

Sparkling Shiraz: The pièce de résistance this year might be this wine!Treveri Cellars also makes a $20 sparkling shiraz that has such vibrant notes of cranberry, I immediately knew I had to serve this for Thanksgiving! My gut is that it’s going to be a smashing success. But I’ve not actually tried this wine with a savory meal yet- so I’ll make sure to report back with my annual Thanksgiving Postmortem and let you know what my guests thought of this choice- and the others! I am SO excited to hear what my guests think of this wine with the main meal!

Cabernet Franc, for my annual ‘delicate red’ wine. Traditionally it would be a pinot noir -and there are plenty to choose from from the USA- for this old world Burgundy fan. But I’ve been absolutely blown away by the beauty of balance of the cabernet franc from Owen Roe winery. So I have one bottle of $28 Owen Roe’s Rosa Mystica, a wine that totally wrecked me -in a good way- and I plan on putting this on my Thanksgiving Table. This Yakima Valley red is really gorgeous and drinks like an old-world red – I simply can’t wait to try the pairing with turkey and gravy!

Zinfandel: I have two bottles I am going to decide between: a rare and hard to gain Turley, of which I have ONE bottle (and it’s a hoarder bottle I’m loath to open) and my favorite Zin on the planet, Lizzy James OVZ again from Lodi’s Harney Lane. I could almost as easily choose their standard Zin, the Scottsboro Zin, or even their Syrah- but I am just in love with the gnarly, curled old vines and the magical fruit they produce. The wine is big, bold, yet refined and polarizing. Any time I have opened a bottle of the $36 Lizzy James, it has changed lives at the table. It’s a small price to pay, that’s all I’m saying.

So- let me know what you think about my picks, and what you plan to open for your Thanksgiving this year!

Color is pale yellow, with a nose of pear, pineapple, vanilla extract and toasted oak. On the palate, apple and pear dominate with a buttery and rich mouthfeel, wrapped up by hints of brown butter sugar cookies and lime zest. This is a great wine to sip on the porch in the afternoon; perhaps the ideal food pairing is baked chicken with fresh vegetables. This is the classic, savory, buttery chardonnay made with ten months of aging in French oak, a touch high in alcohol for me but the mouthfeel did not give that away. For my readers who love classic California chardonnay in the under $25 mark, this is a bottle you need to find!

A blend of two fruits from two Monterey estates, aged for 12 month in French and American oak. Color is deep garnet with maroon edging. The nose offers cassis and blackberry, then green vegetation with notes of eucalyptus, basalt, and cedar. On the palate: moderate dark fruit starts and finishes. Black plum and black currants cross the front palate, potting soil with loam and sodium on the back palate with a spice mix and heat from the alcohol across the top palate. Medium-long finish with strong fruit is retained thoughout. I tasted this over the course of a week and the fruit profile expanded to full maturity after a couple of days. It was delightfully young upon opening and evolved with air to a nice maturity, so I’d suggest decanting or using an aerator for maximum enjoyment. Ideal pairings with grilled meats and game, my preferred pairing was grilled steak and grilled vegetables (also endorsed by a vegetarian guest who did the pairing solely with grilled vegetables). I found this wine to be a solid value, especially at the street price you will find in the $15-20 range.

Color is dusty rose, while the perfumed nose offers rose bush, raspberries, fresh cuttings and sand. On the palate, fully mature cherry and raspberry, notes of sea salt, moss, sandy loam, and white pepper. Considerable heat on the medium-long finish, notes of burnt coffee beans and tasted oak wrap up this little gem. I adored this wine with hot artichoke dip, both cured and baked salmon, and dried meats. I could see this wine easily pairing through an entire meal, tantalizing your mouth from the appetizer to after-dinner bites of strawberries, chocolates, or cheesecake. There is a sense of old-world glamour in this wine, perhaps an early California essence that permeates? Regardless, this is solid value that compares well against wines in the $25+ range.

I first came across The Withers in 2017 at a Wine & Food Festival. One downside to finding a new winery you like at that kind of event might be that after tasting over 100 other wines that day, you’re never quite sure if your palate is still fresh! Because mine had already been put to the test that day, I posted my thoughts and a photo of their wine (if you click the link, you can scroll towards the end) but didn’t provide tasting notes in my post, which was really about the festival. Yet I never forgot the great first impression of The Withers’ wines, which was tremendous winemaking with vast flavor differences between the 2014 Pinot Noirs from Sonoma Coast and Anderson Valley.Ever since then, I’ve been looking for an opportunity to sit down with one of the pinots from The Withers, and I finally have the opportunity to do so and to share it with you!

Color is a deep, yet translucent, ruby. The nose offers rose bush and dried cranberry, with hints of spice and salinity. On the palate, the acidity is as much a star as the fruit, with dark cherry and raspberry, limestone and toasted oak. A beautiful tartness passes across the mid-palate; a line of gorgeous red cherry bathed in Himalayan salt crosses the upper back palate and washes away with a beam of acidity, leaving the mouth begging for more. This is a gorgeous wine, so well-made, sleek and linear, with solid underlying strength and maturity. You simply have to taste it to believe it. It posses a complexity I’ve not found before from California in an under-$75/bottle pinot noir price point. At three years old, I’d love to taste this at ten and 15 years, but I’d never let this wine age that long- it’s too good at this price point not to open!

Withering With Food: While I started pairing this wine gently with cheeses -soft rind brie, goat cheese, then gouda and finally a blue, all of which passed with flying colors- my next test was a field greens salad with cranberries (oh yeah), progressing to whole wheat pasta with a garlic tomato sauce – which is about as far as most pinot noirs can go. Not The Withers, this wine still has body and hidden power ready to match more- I’m not sure if it’s the racehorse on the bottle or a Navy SEAL in disguise- but this wine can pair far past salmon, and I would be willing to try this with a porterhouse steak or full on rib roast, and bet the bottle that it can pair just as well. It reminded me how floored I was when comparing the Peters Vineyards with the Anderson Valley pinot noir a year ago. The terroir and that 777 clone is a whole game changer to this wine! #BOOM. My hat is off to the winemaker. Color me seriously impressed: I adore this wine and think it’s a killer value with huge standards, an unsung hero that is just now starting to find the popularity it deserves.

If, like me, you love California pinot noir, you owe it to yourself to taste this and see if you agree. Buy some now and years later, you can tell your friends you got in before the brand exploded.

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